Barbara Monaghan's Reviews > Last House

I really liked The Women in the Castle, so was excited to read Last House. This is a very ambitious work of historic fiction spanning from WWII to the near future and focusing on several generations of one family. Nick Taylor, son of Mennonites from the mid-west, is a WWII veteran who has become a corporate attorney for the oil industry. Bet is a reluctant 50's housewife, raised in a newly affluent Irish-Catholic family in suburban NJ. They raise two children in Connecticut, who get swept up in the turbulence and change of the 60's. which ends in tragedy. And then there's their children and grandchildren. There's plenty to think about in the book including climate change, America's role in the world, racism, women's rights etc. Through it all, the family keeps a second home Last House in the Northeast kingdom as Vermont, a metaphor for where we've been and where we're going.